Google Bard now helps write software code in 20 programming languages

Alphabet’s Google said on Friday it would update Bard, its generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to help people write code to develop software, as the tech giant catches up a quick run on AI technology.

Last month, the company launched the public release of Bard to gain traction on Microsoft.

The release of ChatGPT, a chatbot from Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI, sparked a tech industry sprint last year to put AI into the hands of more users.

Google describes Bard as an experiment enabling collaboration with generative AI, a technology that relies on past data to create rather than identify content.

Bard will be able to code in 20 programming languages, including Java, C++ and Python, and can also help debug and explain code to users, Google said Friday.

The company said Bard can also optimize code to make it faster or more efficient with simple prompts like “Could you make this code faster?”.

Currently, Bard is accessible to a small group of users who can chat with the bot and ask questions instead of running the traditional Google search tool.

The company began public release of its Bard chatbot in late March this year, seeking users and feedback to gain ground over Microsoft in a fast-paced race on artificial intelligence technology. Bard could show three different versions or “drafts” of a given answer that users could switch between, and it showed a button that said “Google it”, if a user wanted web results for a query.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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